Stream onTelevisionReviewDressed as a 6ft 4in blue insect, Peter Serafinowicz’s superhero is a throwback to the Golden Age of Comic Books – but with everything just a fraction off
What is it? A superhero series, because Lord knows, we need another one of those at the moment.
Why you’ll love it: As superhero series go, it’s less po-faced than the 27 or so currently clogging up Netflix. More importantly, it’s finally a decent platform for Peter Serafinowicz, one of our finest comic talents, but someone who has struggled to be the centre of attention in the past. No chance of that happening here though, given he’s dressed as a 6ft 4in blue insect.
If The Tick looks strangely familiar, it’s possibly because this isn’t the first time he has appeared on our screens. Originally created by comic-book artist Ben Edlund as a satirical send-up of superhero tropes, The Tick has been adapted for TV twice before, first in a sneakily smart kids cartoon (readers of a certain age might remember it airing in the post-Heartbreak High slot on mid-90s BBC2), then in a live-action sitcom starring Patrick Warburton who played Puddy in Seinfeld. Both were enjoyably absurdist but neither stuck around for terribly long – mass appeal was never terribly likely for a franchise featuring characters named Man-Eating Cow, Fishboy and The Forehead.
Still, in this era of streaming TV, when Netflix and Amazon are frantically stockpiling shows, even something as selfconsciously niche as The Tick can be granted another life. This version, from Christopher Nolan collaborator Wally Pfister, has a distinct whiff of Kick-Ass about its premise. Arthur (Griffin Newman) is a timid accountant haunted by childhood memories of witnessing the murder of his father at the hands of The Terror, an aged supervillain with the murderous tendencies of Doctor Doom and the gravelly timbre of a midwestern Jim Bowen. The Terror is thought to be dead, but Arthur believes otherwise and sets out to prove it. Along the way he encounters The Tick, an exuberant, azure-suited supe with the strength of “a crowded bus stop of men” and a habit of saying the first thing that comes into his head. Soon the pair are battling baddies – Arthur reluctantly wearing an effete-looking moth outfit – in what The Tick calls “an epic tale rife with destiny, adventure and blood loss”.
While Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy and co trade in wink-to-the-camera self-awareness, there’s no trace here of The Tick being in on the joke. He has a sense of moral righteousness, not to mention self-importance, that’s reminiscent of heroes from the Golden Age of Comic Books of the 1930s and 40s – but with everything just a fraction off. The show has enormous fun in particular with The Tick’s garbled superhero sloganeering, which sounds like someone fed Captain America’s catchphrases into Google Translate. (I’m particularly fond of him repeatedly calling Arthur a “precious balloon of hope”.) Serafinowicz jumps at the chance of stretching into such an outsized creation, bouncing through scenes with puppyish enthusiasm.
The Tick is not without its problems. While earlier incarnations filled every frame with surrealism (did I mention Man-Eating Cow?), Pfister’s version has elected to make its hero a beacon of bizarreness in an otherwise relatively normal superhero universe, which means that things tend to sag when Serafinowicz is off screen. And, unwisely, its creators have decided to “go dark” with the source material, handing Arthur a traumatic backstory and peppering scenes with moments of extreme violence that jar with the otherwise breezy tone of the show. Still, for all its uneven elements, it’s worth persisting with for Serafinowicz’s performance alone. Hopefully this time around The Tick will avoid another early extermination.
Where: Amazon Prime
Length: 12 30-minute episodes.
Standout episode: Number four, when The Tick crashes Arthur’s stepfather’s 60th birthday party.
If you liked The Tick, watch: Jessica Jones (Netflix); Misfits (4oD)
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